t Children playing by a pond in the expansive Nara Park
t Children playing by a pond in the expansive Nara Park
Experience Western Honshu
The cultural heartland of the country, Western Honshu is where Japan’s first imperial courts held sway, in an area called Yamato. The name Yamato refers to where heaven and earth divide, and also to the land founded by the mythical son of the gods, emperor Jimmu. In the Japanese mind, Yamato is a holy place, a homeland, as the legendary emperor Keiko expressed it in verse form almost two millennia ago, “whose trees and rocks, streams, and mountains house the gods.”
Legend solidified into fact in the 4th century AD when a clan called Yamato expanded its kingdom in the region. Japan’s first emperors, the Yamato rulers set up court on the Yamato Plain, the site of present-day Nara Prefecture, home to the graceful ancient city of Nara, with its quiet stroll gardens, the smell of lingering incense, and the reflections of winged pagodas in green ponds.
Despite this mystical history, this is not just a land of antiquity. Hiroshima, reborn after the devastating 1945 atomic bomb, the international port of Kobe, and Osaka are Western Honshu’s great metropolitan centers.